Saturday, May 26, 2007

This thought occurs while I'm watching YouTube videos. Recently I watched the "I'm a Marvel, and I'm a DC" series. It is sort of a parody of the Mac/PC ads, but more of a commentary on the various comic books and their characters.

It's also just a guy playing with his action figures.

Here's a sample for those that haven't seen it:

These are consistently highly rated, and the premise is very simple. Simple to shoot, simple to edit, just mix in a little cleverness and Bob's your uncle.

The early Ask A Ninja videos were the same, just a guy in front of a camera. Again easy to shoot and edit, and highly popular.

What is your official job title?Assistant Language Teacher Until the end of July anyway. Then I will be returning to EWU as a grad student and working as a systems administrator. Yay for me!

Do you wear a watch? If so, is it digital or analog? If not, why not?I wear a dual analog-digital Fossil. It's way old, but I love it. It has the time in Japan and the West Coast, so I know if it's a good time to call or not. Sadly, they don't make this model (or anything remotely like it) anymore.

How long can you hold your breath?I'm back up to 2:45. Not quite three minutes, but I'm almost there again. (I think it helps that I have basically no muscle mass to drain that precious precious oxygen from my blood ^_^)

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I logged in from an un-blocked computer last night, or at least I tried. It turns out that you can NO LONGER user Blogger log-ins, you must now use Google log-ins. And that converts all your blogs to the new blogger beta. AND deletes your old profile. UPDATE: AND changes the e-mail address to send new posts to.

This is ridiculously retarded.

Anyway, I redirected my blog to a different domain, so I could access it at work. And it turns out that blogger.com is accessible from work, AS LONG AS you only use blogger beta and Japanese pages. I can't change the language to English, so I don't know what most of the buttons do anymore, and I can't post from there (still only via e-mail).

So the stupid blogger beta and the stupid blocker at work, two great tastes that go great together.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Let me explain why: I had dropped by a convenience store to grab some breakfast, because I was too tired/lazy this morning to make it myself. So, that put me a few minutes behind, and I was a bit late for work.

This is normal for me. I'm always late. Ask anyone.

Last school year, I was late so often that they stopped scheduling 1st-period classes for me. I would be late up to an hour, but I'd stay after two or three (or often actually more) hours, so it MORE than balanced out.

This school year, however, I have many more classes, so my schedule is pretty full. I can't afford to be late regularly anymore. That's fine, I can make it on time if I try. But today I didn't have any 1st period classes, so I was taking it easy.

This week, for some reason, we are on 45-minute lessons, and the schedule is pretty random, so when I got to the school, I checked the teacher's schedule board. If classes are rearranged, it will be reflected here. Last school year, this would even indicate whenever I had a Team Teaching class, because it was kind of a special class (each class would see me only once every two weeks). Every Team Teaching lesson would have a big " T.T." written on it in yellow chalk (which stood out clearly against the normal white chalk). This year, since I see every freshman class at the same time every week, my lessons aren't so special, so they are not indicated unless there is a change.

So anyway, I checked the schedule board, and there were no "T.T."s, so I knew my schedule hadn't been changed, and I wouldn't have class until 2nd period. I went upstairs to my desk and sat down to enjoy my breakfast. While I was eating, I noticed a note on my desk from the teacher I would be Team Teaching with 2nd period saying that the schedule was changed.

To 1st period.

I looked at my watch. Class had started 10 minutes ago. As I'm running through the halls with my stack of worksheets, I couldn't help wondering "WHY WASN'T THIS ON THE SCHEDULE BOARD?" And, why didn't anyone call me? My cell-phone number is on a piece of paper, taped to the bookshelf by my desk, in clear sight. How could you miss that?

Anyway, I got to class (JUST as the teacher was about to start an alternate lesson, after having apparently waited for me for 10 minutes), apologized for my tardiness, and rushed the lesson. It went OK (I plan flexibility into my lessons for a reason), but I was still upset at being late.

I was so mad at whomever wrote up the schedule today. Immediately after class I went back to the schedule board to confirm that there was NO indication that I had a Team Teaching lesson 1st period.

And that's when I noticed that, next to the kanji for "English" for that class and that period, was a small " T.T." in white chalk.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Recently, I was chastised by Thomas for not posting to my blog for a year. He is not wrong.Also recently, my school beefed up their computer security, so I can't bypass the block and at least read blogspot blogs anymore (farewell, Worthless Hack). Not that I could post comments anyway, but at least before I could read the original posts sans pictures.

Well, this aggression will not stand, man.

I'm (hypothetically) going to actually start posting again, via e-mail. This post, for example. There are some drawbacks:

I won't be able to respond to comments, although I should have the comments e-mailed to me by the blogspot system, so I'll be able to read them.

I won't be able to edit my posts. If I make a smistake, just live with it. I won't even be able to see it.

There are lots of things I'd like to post about, but didn't have time to before. Now I do.

What will I miss about Japan? What will I NOT miss about Japan? What am I looking forward to, back home? How am I getting back home?

Look forward to it. This is just a test post. And a new post after a year of silence? THIS is what RSS was invented for. ^_^